Archive for April, 2009

Skin Hunger by David Lyndon Brown

Titus Books, Auckland, 2009. Reviewed By SCOTT HAMILTON

Late last year I attended the premiere of a short film called Skin Hunger at David Lyndon Brown’s small but stylish apartment in Auckland’s inner city. I sat in the dark with a crowd of Brown’s friends and watched as a series of words – I remember adjectives like ‘sublime’ and abstract nouns like ‘beauty’ – floated across a naked male torso wrapped in blue light. Music fluttered in the background, and a voice – deep and calm, and yet passionate – read fragments of poetry filled with words like ‘sublime’ and ‘beauty’.

Breath by Tim Winton

Pan Macmillan, $37.39. Reviewed by TERENCE WOOD

I’m on the edge of the North Atlantic, paddling for dear life. Fleeing out to sea. Hoping to make it beyond the steepening swell. My arms are wound by adrenaline, my board is skimming over the water, but the race is already lost. The wave stands up in front of me, and collapses like a building.

The only way now is under. I slide off my board and start swimming. If I can get deep enough I’ll dodge the worst. Down I go: deep, but nowhere near enough. Turbulence comes crashing after me and all of a sudden I’m torn, flogged, pulled to pieces by invisible arms. Dragged deeper still. I close my eyes. Read more »

Wellington photographer Bruce Connew has scored the cover on the lastest issue of Britain’s leading literary journal Granta. Bruce has kindly agreed to let the Scoop Review of Books re-publish his account of taking the triptych which deals with clumsy Chinese censorship.

Last spring, on my way back to New Zealand from Dubrovnik, I stopped over in Hong Kong and took a ferry from the airport, up the Pearl River Delta to Zhongshan, a small (by Chinese standards), agreeable city in Guangdong province. It was friends of friends in Zhongshan who loaned me their subscription copy of National Geographic, a special, pre-Olympic Games issue on China, which I had returned after a few days. I decided to buy a copy of my own. I found one in Zhongshan’s chief bookstore, upstairs in Holiday Plaza. It appeared to be the only English-language magazine in a well-stocked shop. It was sealed in polythene.

Grey Ghosts – New Zealand Vietnam vets talk about their war by Deborah Challinor

Harper Collins, $37. Reviewed by MARTIN CRAIG

The Vietnam War was a polarising event for a generation of New Zealanders, and it still has the power to raise debate. We had fought in similar military campaigns before, but our reaction to the war, and the men who fought it, was unprecedented.

Many of the returning soldiers were ordered to remove their uniforms and disappear into the night, and there was little formal acknowledgement of their service until 2008 when celebrating veterans was back in style.

Deborah Challinor interviewed 50 New Zealand Vietnam veterans in 1995 and 1996 for her PhD thesis. This oral history is the basis of Grey Ghosts. The first edition was published in 1998 and this year’s second edition contains one extra chapter updating the continuing campaign for compensation for veterans and their families, and includes the official recognition ceremonies of Tribute 08.

PRESS RELEASE
Kiwis honouring fallen heroes this Anzac Day now have free access to the remarkable history of New Zealand’s Third Division, courtesy of Victoria University’s New Zealand Electronic Text Centre.

In the context of New Zealand’s participation in World War II, the scale and significance of the Third Division’s involvement in the Pacific is often forgotten, says Acting Director of the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (NZETC) Jason Darwin.

PLAYMARKET MEDIA RELEASE
On Anzac Day a theatrical commemoration of those who didn’t fight

It’s generally accepted that the majority of New Zealanders today oppose war and advocate for more peaceful resolutions to conflict. Yet on Anzac Day those conscientious objectors who made difficult stands for this position historically still get limited acknowledgement.

Poem of the Week: Haiku for the Recession

The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World, by Randall Stross

New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007. Reviewed by Review by ED MASON

In our 21st century era of entrepreneurship, celebrity and financial boom and bust we may need to be reminded we aren’t the first generation to live in such interesting and challenging times. A new biography of a man who embodied his era better than most is particularly timely.

With news like Officials close gagging rest home and Name and shame plan for bad rest homes hitting New Zealand headlines, it is clear how vulnerable older members of our community can be.

Ready for Anything, by barrister, journalist and New Zealand author Catriona MacLennan offers people the chance to plan ahead by arming themselves with the necessary information and tools to live happily, safely and well.

Through her book Ms MacLennan shows how a little preparation can save people from the legal and financial minefields of old age. Read more »

Reviewed by SCOTT HAMILTON

From 1951 until his violent death in 1966, Frank O’Hara spent his weekdays at the Museum of Modern Art, working his way from the gift shop till to a senior curator’s office. In his lunch hours O’Hara liked to walk the streets around the museum, eat a sandwich, drink a coffee, and write a poem or two about whatever he saw and whatever was on his mind. When Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Press had published the Lunch Poems in 1964, O’Hara was established as one of the leading members of the ‘New York School’ of postwar poets that also included John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch.